ANTHOLOGY
OF
MAGAZINE VERSE
FOR 1914

AND YEAR BOOK OF
AMERICAN POETRY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

NEW YORK
LAURENCE J. GOMME
1914
Copyright, 1914, by
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
Published December, 1914
Second Edition January, 1916
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

TO
LOUIS V. LEDOUX
AND
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Palmam qui meruit ferat

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The modern idea seems to be that poetry has no relation to life. Life in the modern sense is action, progress, success. Poetry has been conceded special themes: it can deal with passion,—the strange and unnatural and unreal physical attraction of the sexes—with nature, with the symbols of mythology, and with the characteristic sentimental heroism of history and events. With reality, it must have nothing to do. It is supposed, by the modern world of Anglo-Saxon literalness, to create an atmosphere of illusion, which one must avoid to keep one’s emotions from going astray in a civilization that needs the hardest kind of common sense. It is paradoxical that the English-speaking people who have given the world the greatest poets, should take this false attitude while in possession of the greatest spiritual and imaginative legacy of life and experience, bequeathed them from one generation to another during the last four hundred years.

Escaping the illusion, this modern world has become the prisoner of delusion. For, if poetry deals with anything, it deals with reality. No matter how remote the setting, how subtle the communication, the one hard fact about true poetry, is its reality. The poet at the core and centre of life, surrounded with his dreams, his clairvoyant madness imbibed from the full draught of experience, his intensity of emotion, his childlike tenderness of sympathy, his quickening ecstasy of unashamed and unrestrained feeling, is considered the abnormal product of modern civilization; while in truth he is alone the one normal type of modern mankind, because he alone is in absolute harmony and understanding with the real and common impulse of human destiny.

The great secret of life is to discover by a process of related effects, this common reality of experience. Most of mankind grope blindly in the dark, and miss it, and by a kind of frenzied and pitiable ignorance acquire the abnormal character of conduct. The poet discovers, or at least puts his being wholly at the disposal of, these secrets, wins a serene and contemplative relationship to these effects, and lives a normal spiritual life. Harmony and rhythm are but two common terms that express and designate infinity. There was a man who was so absolutely sane that the scoffers of his day called him mad—this man was William Blake. Christ was a madman to the community of his day, even his closest friends and disciples were not without doubt at times as to his sanity. But these two men were never a hair’s breadth from the commonest reality of existence. They realized imaginative facts, and kept in absolute tune with the harmony and rhythm of life, not merely with what they saw with the actual eye, but with that more penetrative, more limitless sense, the seeing soul. They were poets, and the one insistent quality of their message, was the reality of mortal and immortal life.

It is hard to make a certain type of mind understand that all which is seen with the physical eye, and touched with the fleshly hand, is illusion. That kind of a mind does not understand symbols. It belongs to the so-called practical people of the world, who obey, but do not comprehend, laws; whose laws, indeed, are the conventions of minds similar to their own. They organize, but do not construct; they interpret, but do not create. They are the wheels, and not the motor-power, of the engine of civilization and humanity. These are the people who make up nine-tenths of the world’s population; without the other tenth, they would perish. Their reality in life is mathematical immediacy, the cloak of visibility in which they are wrapped to go about their daily tasks in the world. Now poetry sees in these people and their affairs only the symbols of what is real, looks upon their whole fantastic display of living as the illusion beneath which their real living is concealed; the crises of their joys and sorrows, their aspirations and passions, hidden in the reality of their consciousness where exists an infinite universe of being, and where every event of their lives is enacted before their shadow is thrown upon the stage of the world. The fact of life is there, hidden away in the solitary soul, determining the illusions of conductual existence. It is crowded with moods, emotions and feelings, experienced with such intensity that what breaks forth in actual deed and event is but a faint reflection of the real experience the soul has gone through. The ideal is the real, because it is what one has lived but cannot express in the related experience of human intercourse.

Poetry comes nearer finality in embodying the exact meaning and intensity of human feeling than any other art. Human feeling, being the root of all individual intelligence, is the most inexplicable quantity in life. Intuition is the primary significance of our existence. And it is the quality which gives to poetry its visionary and spiritual substance. In a nation it is the register of a people’s culture.

The study of poetry in the magazines which I began ten years ago, has grown into the convincing evidence of the following pages of this book. During this time we have passed through a number of phases in our national life; but through these changing aspects of national aspirations, there has run, like a widening and brightening strand of culture, the development of a new period of poetry, both in its productive and appreciative aspects. From 1900 to 1905, poetry had declined; and I think there has never been another period in our history when so unintelligent and indifferent an attitude existed toward the art. The scale since 1905 has been ascending, and the high pitch of achievement has not yet been reached. Whether fine poetry creates a general and popular recognition of the art, or the sympathetic appreciation of poetry for itself encourages excellent production, I cannot say. But this is apparent: that a period or epoch of the highest achievement has always been one of popular appreciation.

A factor that should be taken into consideration, and which affects poetry and its audience, is the attitude of the book reviews in our most influential literary journals. A characteristic example is the New York Nation, which has been in the habit of grouping in a few articles during the year with indiscriminate selection, the volumes of poetry which it receives. In these reviews there is a supercilious and academic attitude which dismisses really important work with opinions which have every suggestion of preconceived judgment. One has only to turn back his files to the review of Masefield’s “Everlasting Mercy” and “The Widow in the Bye Street,” to see the type of poetry reviewing that is more common than uncommon in American periodicals and newspapers. I do not mean to make The Nation an exception, but an illustration of the kind of stewardship with which reviewers in some of our most authoritative publications perform the duties of a serious and distinguished branch of American authorship.

To show that there is a quality of poetry in our national production worthy of pride and support, it has been my privilege for a number of years to emphasize in an annual review the distinction of the verse in the magazines. Out of these reviews has grown a demand for a more permanent preservation of the best work, resulting in this annual “Anthology of Magazine Verse,” to which are added records, references, and criticisms, which constitute a “Year-Book of American Poetry.” While all the other arts have had this service performed in their interests, poetry, the one art that most needed such a special reinforcement of its achievement, has been permitted to drift along throughout our entire critical history without this sort of attention.

The poetry in the magazines this year has been of an excellence in the longer pieces beyond the standard of any year in which I have made these estimates. The selections in this volume give evidence of a serious, even anxious, probing of human life. The lyric, represented by some lovely work, has not been practiced with the same irresponsible emotional delight as in past years. Perhaps, there has never been a year when the American poets have shown the independence of their own efforts, when comparatively new work has been so free from English influences. What influences there are, seem to come from French sources. Vers libre has been taken out of the hands of weak and pompous innovators, and made a distinctive medium by a few earnest and powerful singers. The most notable distinction in this respect is to be found in the work of James Oppenheim, whose book, “Songs for the New Age,” is a milestone in our poetic progress. So is Vachel Lindsay’s new work. He has mastered a new form of poetic expression in his volume “The Congo and Other Poems.” Miss Amy Lowell, in the better parts of “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” is working toward a new elasticity in rhythm, which is beginning to produce effective and beautiful results. On the other hand Mr. Arthur Stringer in “Open Water” utterly fails to embody in actual performance the principles expounded in the introduction to that volume, though this introduction is as important a piece of critical writing in English upon the subject as I know. No matter how revolutionary they attempt to be in expression, there is still in these writers a traditional note imbuing the substance which makes up the significant part of their creativeness.

The selections in this volume are chosen from all kinds and methods of poetic expression, and the reader’s attention is invited to their differences in many aspects—though the aspect of quality is, I think, of equal attainment in all—of such poems as Bliss Carman’s Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Percy MacKaye’s “Fight,” Vachel Lindsay’s “The Firemen’s Ball,” Eloise Briton’s “The Two Flames,” Conrad Aiken’s “Romance,” Olive Tilford Dargan’s “Old Fairingdown” and “Path Flower,” Joyce Kilmer’s “Twelve-Forty-Five,” and Don Marquis’s “The God-Maker, Man.” Of the shorter pieces, I think the standard is decidedly above last year’s quality. Mahlon Leonard Fisher has again followed the success of previous years with his sonnet “Afterwards,” which sustains his position as one of the foremost sonnet-writers this country has yet produced. This poet has the unusual distinction of a fine reputation without having published a book, but his definite contribution to American poetry will soon take place with the publication of his first volume, “An Old Mercer, and Other Poems.” A poem likely to create a profound impression is Don Marquis’s “The God-Maker, Man,”—a fine achievement, not only for its flashing images, but for spiritual substance shaped with compelling conviction.

The selections in this volume reflect the extraordinary richness of the published volumes this year. I do not recall any year of the past decade when the quantity and quality alike have been so notable. The autumn season’s publication of verse usually shows a preponderance in quality of books by English poets, who seem to meet with more favorable consideration from the best established publishers. There have been this year a number of notable volumes by English poets brought out in this country, but the balance of distinction, both in standard and numbers of books, belongs this year most emphatically to the American poets. Thirty-five volumes of distinguished poetry stand to our credit, and these are only a selection from a larger number of books which merit appreciation. Books by Louis V. Ledoux, George Edward Woodberry, Louis Untermeyer, Walter Conrad Arensberg, William Rose Benét, Vachel Lindsay, George Sterling, Olive Tilford Dargan, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, Conrad Aiken, James Oppenheim, Harry Kemp, Amelia Josephine Burr, Joyce Kilmer, Amy Lowell, Percy MacKaye, Arthur Davison Ficke, Edwin Markham, Agnes Lee, and Bliss Carman, are among those which have advanced the significance of the year’s output.

The European war has had a more immediate effect upon literature than almost anything else. All books of a non-military character published just before the war, with the exception of poetry, have been thrown into relatively ineffective significance. Poetry endures because it is integrally woven with the warp of man’s real existence, and not of that illusory substance, of which other kinds of imaginative literature are fashioned, and which has been so easily wiped away by this war’s primal brutality. And poetry has aspired to sustain the nobler part of man’s nature during the confusion into which civilization has been plunged since the war began. The English people, who have been in the world’s vanguard practising democratic ideals, have, in their poets to-day, shattered the idol of war and are glorifying the ideals of peace.

The best poems in English directly inspired by the war have been produced by American poets. Of these I have gathered a representative group in this volume. The work achieved by Percy MacKaye on different phases of the European war has made more secure than ever his position as a poet. It is no exaggeration to say that the two groups of sonnets which originally appeared in the Boston Transcript in August and September, and which are now included in his volume, “The Present Hour,” are comparable as a whole to William Watson’s “The Purple East,” and in such individual pieces as “Kruppism,” and “The Real Germany,” he has done work finer and more impressive than is to be found in any of the older writer’s sonnets. Moreover, such pieces as “If!” and “The Other Army,” by Bartholomew F. Griffin; “Prelude,” by Edmond McKenna; “He Went for a Soldier,” by Ruth Comfort Mitchell, and “To a Necrophile,” by Walter Conrad Arensberg, are striking and spontaneous poetry of a high order. In E. Sutton, a poet is presented, who has produced martial poetry in “The Bugle,” “The Drum,” and the stirring “Pipes of the North,” which, for swinging rhythm and profound reflection upon the pomp and futility of military glory, has not been equalled by any contemporary poet.

A notable feature of the poetry year is the Kennerley edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” The works of Whitman have been transferred from publisher to publisher so often, that there has been little opportunity for their circulation among the people for whom he wrote. This edition contains the text and arrangement preferred by the poet himself, and is the only perfect and complete issue, comprising one hundred and six additional poems not included in any other edition. There are suitable editions to meet the demand of all classes of Whitman enthusiasts and students: an India paper edition bound in leather, a library edition bound in cloth, and two issues of a Popular edition, bound in cloth and in paper respectively. To these are added the “Complete Prose” in a Library and Popular edition in cloth. None of the leading American poets of the past generation have been so unfortunate in publication; and many who believe Whitman to be America’s greatest poet will be glad to know, that now, by the authorization of his executors, all his works are gathered in uniform editions under one imprint.

Other important new editions of poetry are the cheap reissue by the Oxford University Press of John Sampson’s final and authoritative text of William Blake’s complete poems, and the new reprint in Bohn’s Popular Library issued by The Macmillan Company of Henry Vaughan’s Complete Poems.

As in former years in my annual summary in the Boston Transcript, I have examined the contents of the leading American magazines. To the seven magazines which I examined last year,—namely, Harper’s, Scribner’s, The Century, The Forum, Lippincott’s, The Smart Set, and The Bellman,—I have added this year three monthlies, The Trend, The International, and The Masses; and one quarterly, The Yale Review. The Bellman still maintains its high poetic distinction, by virtue of which it prints more good poetry than any other American weekly, and most American monthlies. As last year, I have winnowed from other magazines distinctive poems for classification and notice:—one each from The Metropolitan, The Craftsman, The Poetry Journal, the Southern Woman’s Magazine, Puck, and The Infantry Journal; and two each from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Outlook; while from three newspapers I have selected fourteen poems:—eleven from the Boston Evening Transcript, two from the Boston News Bureau, and one from the New York Evening Sun. In quoting from the Boston Transcript, I wish to testify to the ready recognition and encouragement this daily paper has offered to poets and poetry. It is one of the paper’s finest traditions.

The poems published during the year in the eleven representative magazines I have submitted to an impartial critical test, choosing from the total number what I consider the “distinctive” poems of the year. From the distinctive pieces are selected fifty-two poems, to which are added thirty from other magazines and from newspapers not represented in the list of eleven, making a total of eighty-two, which are intended to represent what I call an “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914.”

Quoting from what I have written in previous years, to emphasize the methods which guided my selections, the reader will see how impartial are the tests by which the distinctive and best poems are chosen: “I have not allowed any special sympathy with the subject to influence my choice. I have taken the poet’s point of view, and accepted his value of the theme he dealt with. The question was: How vital and compelling did he make it? The first test was the sense of pleasure the poem communicated; then to discover the secret or the meaning of the pleasure felt; and in doing so to realize how much richer one became in a knowledge of the purpose of life by reason of the poem’s message.”

In one hundred and forty-seven numbers of these eleven magazines I find there were published during 1914 a total of 647 poems, of which 157 were poems of distinction. The total number of poems printed in each magazine, and the number of the distinctive poems are: Century, total 71, 19 of distinction; Harper’s, total 39, 10 of distinction; Scribner’s, total 49, 18 of distinction; Forum, total 33, 13 of distinction; Lippincott’s, total 56, 8 of distinction; The Smart Set (excluding November and December), total 148, 18 of distinction; The Bellman (until November 7th), total 42, 23 of distinction; The Yale Review, total 19, 10 of distinction; The Trend (April, and June to November), total 51, 16 of distinction; The Masses (excluding December), total 53, 13 of distinction; The International (excluding November and December), total 86, 9 of distinction.

Following the text of the poems making the anthology in this volume, I have given the titles and authors of all the poems classified as distinctive, published in the magazines of the year; in addition I give a list of all the poems and their authors in the one hundred and forty-seven numbers of the magazines examined, as a record which readers and students of poetry will find useful.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and thanks to the editors of Scribner’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Forum, The Century Magazine, The Outlook, Lippincott’s Magazine, The Bellman, The Smart Set, The Yale Review, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Poetry Journal, The International, The Masses, The Metropolitan, Harper’s Weekly, The Craftsman, The Nation, The Southern Woman’s Magazine, Puck, The Infantry Journal, The Boston News Bureau, The New York Evening Sun, and the Boston Evening Transcript, and to the publishers of these magazines and newspapers, for kind permission to reprint in this volume the poems making up the “Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914.” To the authors of these poems I am equally indebted and grateful for their willingness to have me reprint their work in this form. Since their appearance in the magazines and before the close of the year when the contents of this volume was made up, twenty-eight poems herein included have appeared in volumes of original poetry by their authors. For the use of “Yankee Doodle” and “The Firemen’s Ball” by Vachel Lindsay, included in his volume “The Congo, and Other Poems”; of “Fight,” “France,” and “Six Sonnets (August, 1914)” by Percy MacKaye, included in his volume “The Present Hour”; and for “Romance” by Conrad Aiken, included in his volume “Earth Triumphant,” I have also to thank The Macmillan Company, under whose imprint these volumes appear. Similar acknowledgment is due to the George H. Doran Company for permission to reprint “The Twelve-Forty-Five” by Joyce Kilmer, included in his volume, “Trees and Other Poems”; and to print “In the Roman Forum” and “A Lynmouth Widow” by Amelia Josephine Burr, included in her volume “In Deep Places.” I am grateful to Charles Scribner’s Sons for two poems by Olive Tilford Dargan, “Old Fairingdown” and “Path Flower,” included in her volume “Path Flower”; and for two poems by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, “From a Motor in May,” and “If You Should Cease to Love Me,” included in her volume “One Woman to Another.” I am indebted to Mr. Mitchell Kennerley for kind permission to reprint Sonnets XXIX, XXX, and XXXVII from “Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter”; and to Mr. A. M. Robertson for two poems by George Sterling, “Ballad of Two Seas” and “The Hunting of Dian,” included in his volume “Beyond the Breakers, and Other Poems.” Finally, The Century Company have been kind enough to permit me to republish “Landscapes” and “Summons” by Louis Untermeyer, from his volume entitled “Challenge”; and “Patterns,” “A Handful of Dust,” and “We Dead” by James Oppenheim, from his volume entitled “Songs for a New Age.” If I have omitted any acknowledgments, it is quite unintentional, and I trust that any such omission will be regarded leniently. I wish it to be understood that the privilege extended to me so courteously, by the authors, magazine editors and publishers, and book publishers, to print the poems in this volume, does not in any sense restrict the authors in their rights to print the poems in volumes of their own or in any other place. I wish to thank the Boston Transcript for the privilege of reprinting material in this book which originally appeared in the columns of that paper.

A new feature this year is the series of critical summaries of new volumes of verse, which are significant, and which have been appraised in accordance with the same principles as the poems in the “Anthology of Magazine Verse.” It is believed that by adding this feature, the book will more nearly approximate to being an actual Year-Book of American Poetry, and it is in this belief that a subtitle has been added to this volume. I believe that not only libraries, but private individuals will welcome the selected lists of the best volumes for library purchase, graded according to the requirements of a large or a small purse. A list is also subjoined of the best books about poetry, and if there seems to be a demand for this innovation, it is planned next year to include in the book critical summaries of these volumes, as well as of the volumes of original verse.

I shall be grateful for suggestions as to improvements of this year-book in future years, and as to valuable extensions of its scope. To all friends who have assisted this volume by their personal efforts, and to the readers of past years who have made this annual publication possible by promoting it through their interest in poetry, I tender my grateful thanks. They are too many to name here, but my gratitude for their efforts is none the less sincere.

W. S. B.

Cambridge, Massachusetts.
November, 1914.

LANDSCAPES
(For Clement R. Wood)

The rain was over, and the brilliant air
Made every little blade of grass appear
Vivid and startling—everything was there
With sharpened outlines, eloquently clear,
As though one saw it in a crystal sphere.
The rusty sumac with its struggling spires;
The golden-rod with all its million fires;
(A million torches swinging in the wind)
A single poplar, marvellously thinned,
Half like a naked boy, half like a sword;
Clouds, like the haughty banners of the Lord;
A group of pansies with their shrewish faces
Little old ladies cackling over laces;
The quaint, unhurried road that curved so well;
The prim petunias with their rich, rank smell;
The lettuce-birds, the creepers in the field—
How bountifully were they all revealed!
How arrogantly each one seemed to thrive—
So frank and strong, so radiantly alive!

And over all the morning-minded earth
There seemed to spread a sharp and kindling mirth,
Piercing the stubborn stones until I saw
The toad face heaven without shame or awe,
The ant confront the stars, and every weed
Grow proud as though it bore a royal seed;
While all the things that die and decompose
Sent forth their bloom as richly as the rose ...
Oh, what a liberal power that made them thrive
And keep the very dirt that died, alive.

And now I saw the slender willow-tree
No longer calm and drooping listlessly,
Letting its languid branches sway and fall
As though it danced in some sad ritual;
But rather like a young, athletic girl,
Fearless and gay, her hair all out of curl,
And flying in the wind—her head thrown back,
Her arms flung up, her garments flowing slack,
And all her rushing spirits running over ...
What made a sober tree seem such a rover—
Or made the staid and stalwart apple-trees,
That stood for years knee-deep in velvet peace,
Turn all their fruit to little worlds of flame,
And burn the trembling orchard there below.
What lit the heart of every golden-glow—
Oh, why was nothing weary, dull or tame?...
Beauty it was, and keen, compassionate mirth
That drives the vast and energetic earth.

And, with abrupt and visionary eyes,
I saw the huddled tenements arise.
Here where the merry clover danced and shone
Sprang agonies of iron and of stone;
There, where the green Silence laughed or stood enthralled,
Cheap music blared and evil alleys sprawled.
The roaring avenues, the shrieking mills;
Brothels and prisons on those kindly hills—
The menace of these things swept over me;
A threatening, unconquerable sea....

A stirring landscape and a generous earth!
Freshening courage and benevolent mirth—
And then the city, like a hideous sore....
Good God, and what is all this beauty for?

Century. Louis Untermeyer.

PHI BETA KAPPA POEM
Harvard, 1914

Sir, friends, and scholars, we are here to serve
A high occasion. Our New England wears
All her unrivalled beauty as of old;
And June, with scent of bayberry and rose
And song of orioles—as she only comes
By Massachusetts Bay—is here once more,
Companioning our fête of fellowship.

The open trails, South, West, and North, lead back
From populous cities or from lonely plains,
Ranch, pulpit, office, factory, desk, or mill,
To this fair tribunal of ambitious youth,
The shadowy town beside the placid Charles,
Where Harvard waits us through the passing years,
Conserving and administering still
Her savor for the gladdening of the race.

Yearly, of all the sons she has sent forth,
And men her admiration would adopt,
She summons whom she will back to her side
As if to ask, “How fares my cause of truth
In the great world beyond these studious walls?”
Here, from their store of life experience,
They must make answer as grace is given them,
And their plain creed, in verity, declare.
Among the many, there is sometimes called
One who, like Arnold’s scholar gipsy poor,
Is but a seeker on the dusky way,
“Still waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.”

He must bethink him first of other days,
And that old scholar of the seraphic smile,
As we recall him in this very place
With all the sweetest culture of his age,
His gentle courtesy and friendliness,
A chivalry of soul now strangely rare,
And that ironic wit which made him, too,
The unflinching critic and most dreaded foe
Of all things mean, unlovely, and untrue.
What Mr. Norton said, with that slow smile,
Has put the fear of God in many a heart,
Even while his hand encouraged eager youth.
From such enheartening who would not dare to speak—
Seeing no truth can be too small to serve,
And no word worthless that is born of love?
Within the noisy workshop of the world,
Where still the strife is upward out of gloom,
Men doubt the value of high teaching—cry,
“What use is learning? Man must have his will!
The élan of life alone is paramount!
Away with old traditions! We are free!”
So Folly mocks at truth in Freedom’s name.
Pale Anarchy leads on, with furious shriek,
Her envious horde of reckless malcontents
And mad destroyers of the Commonwealth,
While Privilege with indifference grows corrupt,
Till the Republic stands in jeopardy
From following false idols and ideals,
Though sane men cry for honesty once more,
Order and duty and self-sacrifice.

Our world and all it holds of good for us
Our fathers and unselfish mothers made,
With noble passion and enduring toil,
Strenuous, frugal, reverent, and elate,
Caring above all else to guard and save
The ampler life of the intelligence
And the fine honor of a scrupulous code—
Ideals of manhood touched with the divine.

For this they founded these great schools we serve,
Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale,
Amherst and Williams, trusting to our hands
The heritage of all they held most high,
Possessions of the spirit and the mind,
Investments in the provinces of joy.

Vast provinces are these! And fortunate they
Who at their will may go adventuring there,
Exploring all the boundaries of Truth,
Learning the roads that run through Beauty’s realm,
Sighting the pinnacles where good meets God,
Encompassed by the eternal unknown sea!

Even for a little to o’erlook those lands,
The kingdoms of Religion, Science, Art,
Is to be made forever happier
With blameless memories that shall bring content
And inspiration for all after days.
And fortunate they whom destiny allows
To rest within those provinces and serve
The dominion of ideals all their lives.
For whoso will, putting dull greed aside,
And holding fond allegiance to the best,
May dwell there and find fortitude and joy.

In the free fellowship of kindred minds,
One band of scholar gypsies I have known,
Whose purpose all unworldly was to find
An answer to the riddle of the Earth—
A key that should unlock the book of life
And secrets of its sorceries reveal.
This, they discovered, had long since been found
And laid aside forgotten and unused.
Our dark young poet who from Dartmouth came
Was told the secret by his gypsy bride,
Who had it from a master over seas,
And he it was first hinted to the band
The magic of that universal lore,
Before the great Mysteriarch summoned him.
It was the doctrine of the threefold life,
The beginning of the end of all their doubt.

In that Victorian age it has become
So much the fashion now to half despise,
Within the shadow of Cathedral walls
They had been schooled and heard the mellow chimes
For Lenten litanies and daily prayers,
With a mild, eloquent, beloved voice
Exhorting to all virtue and that peace
Surpassing understanding—casting there
That “last enchantment of the Middle Age,”
The spell of Oxford and her ritual.

So duteous youth was trained, until there grew
Restive outreaching in men’s thought to find
Some certitude beyond the dusk of faith.
They cried on mysticism to be gone,
Mazed in the shadowy princedom of the soul.

Then as old creeds fell round them into dust,
They reached through science to belief in law,
Made reason paramount in man, and guessed
At reigning mind within the universe.
Piecing the fragments of a fair design
With reverent patience and courageous skill,
They saw the world from chaos step by step,
Under far-seeing guidance and restraint,
Emerge to order and to symmetry,
As logical and sure as music’s own.

With Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall, and the rest,
Our band saw roads of knowledge open wide
Through the uncharted province of the truth,
As on they fared through that unfolding world.
Yet there they found no rest-house for the heart,
No wells sufficient for the spirit’s thirst,
No shade nor glory for the senses starved....
Turning—they fled by moonlit trails to seek
The magic principality of Art,
Where loveliness, not learning, rules supreme.
They stood intoxicated with delight before
The poised unanxious splendor of the Greek;
They mused upon the Gothic minsters gray,
Where mystic spirit took on mighty form,
Until their prayers to lovely churches turned—
(Like a remembrance of the Middle Age
They rose where Ralph or Bertram dreamed in stone);
Entranced they trod a painters’ paradise,
Where color wasted by the Scituate shore
Between the changing marshes and the sea;
They heard the golden voice of poesie
Lulling the senses with its last caress
In Tennysonian accents pure and fine;
And all their laurels were for Beauty’s brow,
Though toiling Reason went ungarlanded.

Then poisonous weeds of artifice sprang up,
Defiling Nature at her sacred source;
And there the questing World-soul could not stay,
Onward must journey with the changing time,
To come to this uncouth rebellious age,
Where not an ancient creed nor courtesy
Is underided, and each demagogue
Cries some new nostrum for the cure of ills.
To-day the unreasoning iconoclast
Would scoff at science and abolish art,
To let untutored impulse rule the world.
Let learning perish, and the race return
To that first anarchy from which we came,
When spirit moved upon the deep and laid
The primal chaos under cosmic law.

And even now, in all our wilful might,
The satiated being cannot bide,
But to that austere country turns again,
The little province of the saints of God,
Where lofty peaks rise upward to the stars
From the gray twilight of Gethsemane,
And spirit dares to climb with wounded feet
Where justice, peace, and loving-kindness are.

What says the lore of human power we hold
Through all these striving and tumultuous days?
“Why not accept each several bloom of good,
Without discarding good already gained,
As one might weed a garden overgrown—
Save the new shoots, yet not destroy the old?
Only the fool would root up his whole patch
Of fragrant flowers, to plant the newer seed.”

Ah, softly, brothers! Have we not the key,
Whose first fine luminous use Plotinus gave,
Teaching that ecstasy must lead the man?
Three things, we see, men in this life require,
(As they are needed in the universe:)
First of all spirit, energy, or love,
The soul and mainspring of created things;
Next wisdom, knowledge, culture, discipline,
To guide impetuous spirit to its goal;
And lastly strength, the sound apt instrument,
Adjusted and controlled to lawful needs.

The next world-teacher must be one whose word
Shall reaffirm the primacy of soul,
Hold scholarship in her high guiding place,
And recognize the body’s equal right
To culture such as it has never known,
In power and beauty serving soul and mind.

Inheritors of this divine ideal,
With courage to be fine as well as strong,
Shall know what common manhood may become,
Regain the gladness of his sons of morn,
The radiance of immortality.
Out of heroic wanderings of the past,
And all the wayward gropings of our time,
Unswerved by doubt, unconquered by despair,
The messengers of such a hope must go;
As one who hears far off before the dawn,
On some lone trail among the darkling hills,
The hermit thrushes in the paling dusk,
And at the omen lifts his eyes to see
Above him, with its silent shafts of light,
The sunrise kindling all the peaks with fire.

The Forum Bliss Carman

THE DESERTED PASTURE

I love the stony pasture
That no one else will have,
The old gray rocks so friendly seem,
So durable and brave.

In tranquil contemplation
It watches through the year,
Seeing the frosty stars arise,
The slender moons appear.

Its music is the rain-wind,
Its choristers the birds,
And there are secrets in its heart
Too wonderful for words.

It keeps the bright-eyed creatures
That play about its walls,
Though long ago its milking herds
Were banished from their stalls.

Only the children come there,
For buttercups in May,
Or nuts in autumn, where it lies
Dreaming the hours away.

Long since its strength was given
To making good increase,
And now its soul is turned again
To beauty and to peace.

There in the earthly springtime
The violets are blue,
And adder-tongues in coats of gold
Are garmented anew.

There bayberry and aster
Are crowded on its floors
When marching summer halts to praise
The Lord of Out-of-doors.

And then October passes
In gorgeous livery,
In purple ash, and crimson oak,
And golden tulip tree.

And when the winds of winter
Their bugles blast again,
I watch the battalions come
To pitch their tents therein.

Atlantic Monthly Bliss Carman

TO A PHŒBE-BIRD

Under the eaves, out of the wet,
You nest within my reach;
You never sing for me and yet
You have a golden speech.

You sit and quirk a rapid tail,
Wrinkle a ragged crest,
Then pirouette from tree to rail
And vault from rail to nest.

And when in frequent, witty fright
You grayly slip and fade,
And when at hand you re-alight
Demure and unafraid,

And when you bring your brood its fill
Of iridescent wings
And green legs dewy in your bill,
Your silence is what sings.

Not of a feather that enjoys
To prate or praise or preach,
O Phœbe, with your lack of noise,
What eloquence you teach!

The Bellman Witter Bynner

FROM A MOTOR IN MAY

The leaves of Autumn and the buds of Spring
Meet and commingle on our winding way—
And we, who glide into the heart of May,
Sense in our souls a sudden quivering.
What though the flesh of blue or scarlet wing
Bid us forget the night in dawning day,
Skies of November, sullen, sad, and gray,
Once hung above this withered covering.
There is no Spring that Autumn has not known,
Nor any Autumn Spring has not divined,—
The odor of dead flowers on the wind
Shall but enrich a fairer blossoming,
And though they shiver from a breeze outblown,
The leaves of Autumn guard the buds of Spring.

The Outlook Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

TO A GARDEN IN APRIL

Alas, and are you pleading now for pardon?
Spring came by night—and so there was no telling?
Spring had his way with you, my little garden....
You hide in leaf, but oh! your buds are swelling.

The Trend Walter Conrad Arensberg

JEWEL-WEED

Thou lonely, dew-wet mountain road,
Traversed by toiling feet each day,
What rare enchantment maketh thee
Appear so gay?

Thy sentinels, on either hand
Rise tamarack, birch and balsam-fir,
O’er the familiar shrubs that greet
The wayfarer;

But here’s a magic cometh new—
A joy to gladden thee, indeed:
This passionate out-flowering of
The jewel-weed,

That now, when days are growing drear,
As summer dreams that she is old,
Hangs out a myriad pleasure-bells
Of mottled gold!

Thine only, these, thou lonely road!
Though hands that take, and naught restore,
Rob thee of other treasured things,
Thine these are, for

A fairy, cradled in each bloom,
To all who pass the charmèd spot
Whispers in warning:—“Friend, admire,—
But touch me not!

“Leave me to blossom where I sprung,
A joy untarnished shall I seem;
Pluck me, and you dispel the charm
And blur the dream!”

The Bellman Florence Earle Coates

IRISH

My father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too;
I pipe you my bag of whistles,
And it is Irish, too.
’Twill sing with you in the morning,
And play with you at noon,
And dance with you in the evening
To a little Irish tune.
For my father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too;
And here is my bag of whistles,
For it is Irish, too.

Boston Transcript Edward J. O’Brien

THE REGENTS’ EXAMINATION

Muffled sounds of the city climbing to me at the window,
Here in the summer noon-tide students busily writing,
Children of quaint-clad immigrants, fresh from the hut and the Ghetto,
Writing of pious Æneas and funeral rites of Anchises.
Old-World credo and custom, alien accents and features,
Plunged in the free-school hopper, grist for the Anglo-Saxons—
Old-World sweetness and light, and fiery struggle of heroes,
Flashed on the blinking peasants, dull with the grime of their bondage!
Race that are infant in knowledge, ancient in grief and traditions—
Lore that is tranquil with age and starry with gleams of the future—
What is the thing that will come from the might of the elements blending?
Neuter and safe shall it be? Or a flame to burst us asunder?

Scribner’s Magazine Jessie Wallace Hughan

YANKEE DOODLE

This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington’s Birthday.

Dawn this morning burned all red
Watching them in wonder.
There I saw our spangled flag
Divide the clouds asunder.
Then there followed Washington.
Ah, he rode from glory,
Cold and mighty as his name
And stern as Freedom’s story.
Unsubdued by burning dawn
Led his continentals.
Vast they were, and strange to see
In gray old regimentals:—
Marching still with bleeding feet,
Bleeding feet and jesting—
Marching from the judgment throne
With energy unresting.
How their merry quickstep played—
Silver, sharp, sonorous,
Piercing through with prophecy
The demons’ rumbling chorus—
Behold the ancient powers of sin
And slavery before them!—
Sworn to stop the glorious dawn,
The pit-black clouds hung o’er them.
Plagues that rose to blast the day,
Fiend and tiger faces,
Monsters plotting bloodshed for
The patient toiling races.
Round the dawn their cannon raged,
Hurling bolts of thunder,
Yet before our spangled flag
Their host was cut asunder.
Like a mist they fled away....
Ended wrath and roaring.
Still our restless soldier-host
From East to West went pouring.
High beside the sun of noon
They bore our banner splendid.
All its days of stain and shame
And heaviness were ended.
Men were swelling now the throng
From great and lowly station—
Valiant citizens to-day
Of every tribe and nation.
Not till night their rear-guard came,
Down the west went marching,
And left behind the sunset rays
In beauty overarching.
War-god banners lead us still,
Rob, enslave and harry;
Let us rather choose to-day
The flag the angels carry—
Flag we love, but brighter far—
Soul of it made splendid:
Let its days of stain and shame
And heaviness be ended.
Let its fifes fill all the sky,
Redeemed souls marching after,
Hills and mountains shake with song,
While seas roll on in laughter.

The Metropolitan Vachel Lindsay

FIGHT
THE TALE OF A GUNNER AT PLATTSBURGH, 1814[1]

I

Jock bit his mittens off and blew his thumbs;
He scraped the fresh sleet from the frozen sign:

Men Wanted—Volunteers. Like gusts of brine
He whiffed deliriums
Of sound—the droning roar of rolling, rolling drums
And shrilling fifes, like needles in his spine,
And drank, blood-bright from sunrise and wild shore,
The wine of war.

With ears and eyes he drank and dizzy brain
Till all the snow danced red. The little shacks
That lined the road of muffled hackmatacks
Were roofed with the red stain,
Which spread in reeling rings on icy-blue Champlain
And splotched the sky like daubs of sealing-wax,
That darkened when he winked, and when he stared
Caught fire and flared.

Men Wanted—Volunteers! The village street,
Topped by the slouching store and slim flagpole,
Loomed grand as Rome to his expanding soul;
Grandly the rhythmic beat
Of feet in file and flags and fifes and filing feet,
The roar of brass and unremitting roll
Of drums and drums bewitched his boyish mood—
Till he hallooed.

His strident echo stung the lake’s wild dawn
And startled him from dreams. Jock rammed his cap
And rubbed a numb ear with the furry flap,
Then bolted like a faun,

Bounding through shin-deep sleigh-ruts in his shaggy brawn,
Blowing white frost-wreaths from red mouth agap
Till, in a gabled porch beyond the store,
He burst the door;

“Mother!” he panted. “Hush! Your pa ain’t up;
He’s worser since this storm. What’s struck ye so?”
“It’s volunteers!” The old dame stammered “Oh!”
And stopped, and stirred her sup
Of morning tea, and stared down in the trembling cup.
“They’re musterin’ on the common now.” “I know,”
She nodded feebly; then with sharp surmise
She raised her eyes:

She raised her eyes, and poured their light on him
Who towered glowing there—bright lips apart,
Cap off, and brown hair tousled. With quick smart
She felt the room turn dim
And seemed she heard, far off, a sound of cherubim
Soothing the sudden pain about her heart.
How many a lonely hour of after-woe
She saw him so!

“Jock!” And once more the white lips murmured “Jock!”
Her fingers slipped; the spilling teacup fell
And shattered, tinkling—but broke not the spell.
His heart began to knock,
Jangling the hollow rhythm of the ticking clock.
“Mother, it’s fight, and men are wanted!” “Well,
Ah well, it’s men may kill us women’s joys,
It’s men—not boys!”

“I’m seventeen! I guess that seventeen—”
“My little Jock!” “Little! I’m six-foot-one.
(Scorn twitched his lip.) You saw me, how I skun
The town last Hallowe’en
At wrastlin’.” (Now the mother shifted tack.) “But Jean?
You won’t be leavin’ Jean?” “I guess a gun
Won’t rattle her.” He laughed, and turned his head.
His face grew red.

“But if it doos—a gal don’t understand:
It’s fight!” “Jock, boy, your pa can’t last much more,
And who’s to mind the stock—to milk and chore?”
Jock frowned and gnawed his hand.
“Mother, it’s men must mind the stock—our own born land,
And lick the invaders.” Slowly in the door
Stubbed the old, worn-out man. “Woman, let be!
It’s liberty:

“It’s struck him like fork-lightnin’ in a pine.
I felt it, too, like that in seventy-six;
And now, if ’twa’n’t for creepin’ pains and cricks
And this one leg o’ mine,
I’d holler young Jerusalem like him, and jine
The fight; but fight don’t come from burnt-out wicks;
It comes from fire.” “Mebbe,” she said, “it comes
From fifes and drums.”

“Dad, all the boys are down from the back hills.
The common’s cacklin’ like hell’s cocks and hens;
There’s swords and muskets stacked in the cow-pens
And knapsacks in the mills;
They say at Isle aux Noix Redcoats are holding drills,
And we’re to build a big fleet at Vergennes.
Dad, can’t I go?” “I reckon you’re a man:
Of course you can.

“I’ll do the chores to home, you do ’em thar!”
“Dad!”—“Lad!” The men gripped hands and gazed upon
The mother, when the door flew wide. There shone
A young face like a star,
A gleam of bitter-sweet ’gainst snowy islands far,
A freshness, like the scent of cinnamon,
Tingeing the air with ardor and bright sheen.
Jock faltered: “Jean!”

“Jock, don’t you hear the drums? I dreamed all night
I heard ’em, and they woke me in black dark.
Quick, ain’t you comin’? Can’t you hear ’em? Hark!
The men-folks are to fight.
I wish I was a man!” Jock felt his throat clutch tight.
“Men-folks!” It lit his spirit like a spark
Flashing the pent gunpowder of his pride.
“Come on!” he cried.

“Here—wait!” The old man stumped to the back wall
And handed down his musket. “You’ll want this;
And mind what game you’re after, and don’t miss.
Good-by: I guess that’s all
For now. Come back and get your duds.”
Jock, looming tall
Beside his glowing sweetheart, stooped to kiss
The little shrunken mother. Tiptoe she rose
And clutched him—close.

In both her twisted hands she held his head
Clutched in the wild remembrance of dim years—
A baby head, suckling, half dewed with tears;
A tired boy abed
By candlelight; a laughing face beside the red
Log-fire; a shock of curls beneath her shears—
The bright hair falling. Ah, she tried to smother
Her wild thoughts.—“Mother!

“Mother!” he stuttered. “Baby Jock!” she moaned
And looked far in his eyes.—And he was gone.
The porch door banged. Out in the blood-bright dawn
All that she once had owned—
Her heart’s proud empire—passed, her life’s dream sank unthroned.
With hands still reached, she stood there staring, wan.
“Hark, woman!” said the bowed old man. “What’s tolling?”
Drums—drums were rolling.

II

Shy wings flashed in the orchard, glitter, glitter;
Blue wings bloomed soft through blossom-colored leaves,
And Phœbe! Phœbe! whistled from gray eaves
Through water-shine and twitter
And spurt of flamey green. All bane of earth and bitter
Took life and tasted sweet at the glad reprieves
Of spring, save only in an old dame’s heart
That grieved apart.

Crook-back and small, she poled the big wellsweep:
Creak went the pole; the bucket came up brimming.
On the bright water lay a cricket swimming
Whose brown legs tried to leap

But, draggling, twitched and foundered in the circling deep.
The old dame gasped; her thin hand snatched him, skimming.
“Dear Lord, he’s drowned,” she mumbled with dry lips;
“The ships! the ships!”

Gently she laid him in the sun and dried
The little dripping body. Suddenly
Rose-red gleamed through the budding apple tree
And “Look! a letter!” cried
A laughing voice; “and lots of news for us inside!”
“How’s that, Jean? News from Jock! Where—where is he?”
“Down in Vergennes—the ship-yards.” “Ships! Ah, no!
It can’t be so.”

“He’s going to fight with guns and be a tar.
See here: he’s wrote himself. The post was late.
He couldn’t write before. The ship is great!
She’s built, from keel to spar,
And called the Saratoga; and Jock’s got a scar
Already—” “Scar?” the mother quavered. “Wait,”
Jean rippled, “let me read.” “Quick, then, my dear,
He’ll want to hear—”

“Jock’s pa; I guess we’ll find him in the yard.
He ain’t scarce creepin’ round these days, poor Dan!”
She gripped Jean’s arm and stumbled as they ran,
And stopped once, breathing hard.
Around them chimney-swallows skimmed the sheep-cropped sward
And yellow hornets hummed. The sick old man
Stirred at their steps, and muttered from deep muse:
“Well, ma; what news?”

“From Jockie—there’s a letter!” In his chair
The bowed form sat bolt upright. “What’s he say?”
“He’s wrote to Jean. I guess it’s boys their way
To think old folks don’t care
For letters.” “Girl, read out.” Jean smoothed her wilding hair
And sat beside them. Out of the blue day
A golden robin called; across the road
A heifer lowed;

And old ears listened while youth read: “‘Friend Jean,
Vergennes: here’s where we’ve played a Yankee trick.
I’m layin’ in my bunk by Otter Crick
And scribblin’ you this mean
Scrawl for to tell the news—what-all I’ve heerd and seen:
Jennie, we’ve built a ship, and built her slick—
A swan!—a seven hundred forty tonner,
And I’m first gunner.

“‘You ought to seen us launch her t’other day!”
Tell dad we’ve christened her for a fight of hisn
He fought at Saratoga. Now just listen!
She’s twice as big, folks say,
As Perry’s ship that took the prize at Put-in-Bay;
Yet forty days ago, hull, masts, and mizzen,
The whole of her was growin’, live and limber,
In God’s green timber.

“‘I helped to fell her main-mast back in March.
The woods was snowed knee-deep. She was a wonder:
A straight white pine. She fell like roarin’ thunder
And left a blue-sky arch

Above her, bustin’ all to kindlin’s a tall larch.—
Mebbe the scart jack-rabbits skun from under!
Us boys hoorayed, and me and every noodle
Yelled Yankee Doodle!

“‘My, how we haw’d and gee’d the big ox-sledges
Haulin’ her long trunk through the hemlock dells,
A-bellerin’ to the tinkle-tankle bells,
And blunted our ax edges
Hackin’ new roads of ice ’longside the rocky ledges.
We stalled her twice, but gave the oxen spells
And yanked her through at last on the home-clearin’—
Lord, wa’n’t we cheerin’!

“‘Since then I’ve seen her born, as you might say:
Born out of fire and water and men’s sweatin’,
Blast-furnace rairin’ and red anvils frettin’
And sawmills, night and day,
Screech-owlin’ like ’twas Satan’s rumhouse run away
Smellin’ of tar and pitch. But I’m forgettin’
The man that’s primed her guns and paid her score:
The Commodore.

“‘Macdonough—he’s her master, and she knows
His voice, like he was talkin’ to his hound.
There ain’t a man of her but ruther’d drown’d
Than tread upon his toes;
And yet with his red cheeks and twinklin’ eyes, a rose
Ain’t friendler than his looks be. When he’s round,
He makes you feel like you’re a gentleman
American.

“‘But I must tell you how we’re hidin’ here.
This Otter Crick is like a crook-neck jug,
And we’re inside. The Redcoats want to plug
The mouth, and cork our beer;

So last week Downie sailed his British lake fleet near
To fill our channel, but us boys had dug
Big shore intrenchments, and our batteries
Stung ’em like bees

“’Till they skedaddled whimperin’ up the lake;
But while the shots was flyin’, in the scrimmage,
I caught a ball that scotched my livin’ image.—
Now, Jean, for Sam Hill’s sake,
Don’t let-on this to mother, for, you know, she’d make
A deary-me-in’ that would last a grim age.
’Tain’t much, but when a feller goes to war
What’s he go for

“‘If ’taint to fight, and take his chances?’” Jean
Stopped and looked down. The mother did not speak.
“Go on,” said the old man. Flush tinged her cheek.
“Truly I didn’t mean—
There ain’t much more. He says: ‘Goodbye now, little queen;
We’re due to sail for Plattsburgh this day week.
Meantime I’m hopin’ hard and takin’ stock.
Your obedient—Jock.’”

The girl’s voice ceased in silence. Glitter, glitter,
The shy wings flashed through blossom-colored leaves,
And Phœbe! Phœbe! whistled from gray eaves
Through water-shine and twitter
And spurt of flamey green. But bane of thought is bitter.
The mother’s heart spurned May’s sweet make-believes,
For there, through falling masts and gaunt ships looming,
Guns—guns were booming.

III

Plattsburgh—and windless beauty on the bay;
Autumnal morning and the sun at seven:
Southward a wedge of wild ducks in the heaven
Dwindles, and far away
Dim mountains watch the lake, where lurking for their prey
Lie, with their muzzled thunders and pent levin,
The war-ships—Eagle, Preble, Saratoga,
Ticonderoga.

And now a little wind from the northwest
Flutters the trembling blue with snowy flecks.
A gunner, on Macdonough’s silent decks,
Peers from his cannon’s rest,
Staring beyond the low north headland. Crest on crest
Behind green spruce-tops, soft as wild-fowls’ necks,
Glide the bright spars and masts and whitened wales
Of bellying sails.

Rounding, the British lake-birds loom in view,
Ruffling their wings in silvery arrogance:
Chubb, Linnet, Finch, and lordly Confiance
Leading with Downie’s crew
The line. With long booms swung to starboard they heave to,
Whistling their flock of galleys who advance
Behind, then toward the Yankees, four abreast,
Tack landward, west.

Landward the watching townsfolk strew the shore;
Mist-banks of human beings blur the bluffs
And blacken the roofs, like swarms of roosting choughs.
Waiting the cannon’s roar
A nation holds its breath for knell of Nevermore
Or peal of life: this hour shall cast the sloughs
Of generations—and one old dame’s joy:
Her gunner boy.

One moment on the quarter-deck Jock kneels
Beside his Commodore and fighting squad.
Their heads are bowed, their prayers go up toward God—
Toward God, to whom appeals
Still rise in pain and mangling wrath from blind ordeals.
Of man, still boastful of his brother’s blood.—
They stand from prayer. Swift comes and silently
The enemy.

Macdonough holds his men, alert, devout:
“He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea
Driven with the wind. Behold the ships, that be
So great, are turned about
Even with a little helm.” Jock tightens the blue clout
Around his waist, and watches casually
Close-by a game-cock, in a coop, who stirs
And spreads his spurs.

Now, bristling near, the British war-birds swoop
Wings, and the Yankee Eagle screams in fire;
The English Linnet answers, aiming higher,
And crash along Jock’s poop
Her hurtling shot of iron crackles the game-cock’s coop,
Where, lo! the ribald cock, like a town crier
Strutting a gunslide, flaps to the cheering crew—
Yankee-doodle-doo!

Boys yell, and yapping laughter fills the roar:
“You bet we’ll do ’em!” “You’re a prophet, cocky!”
“Hooray, old rooster!” “Hip, hip, hip!” cries Jockie.
Calmly the Commodore
Touches his cannon’s fuse and fires a twenty-four.
Smoke belches black. “Huzza! That’s blowed ’em pocky!”
And Downie’s men, like pins before the bowling,
Fall scatter-rolling.

Boom! flash the long guns, echoed by the galleys.
The Confiance, wind-baffled in the bay
With both her port-bow anchors torn away,
Flutters, but proudly rallies
To broadside, while her gunboats range the water-alleys.
Then Downie grips Macdonough in the fray,
And double-shotted from his roaring flail
Hurls the black hail.

The hail turns red, and drips in the hot gloom.
Jock snuffs the reek and spits it from his mouth
And grapples with great winds. The winds blow south,
And scent of lilac bloom
Steals from his mother’s porch in his still sleeping-room.
Lilacs! But now it stinks of blood and drouth!
He staggers up, and stares at blinding light:
“God! This is fight!”

Fight! The sharp loathing retches in his loins;
He gulps the black air, like a drowner swimming,
Where little round suns in a dance go rimming
The dark with golden coins;
Round him and round the splintering masts and jangled quoins
Reel, rattling, and overhead he hears the hymning—
Lonely and loud—of ululating choirs
Strangling with wires.

Fight! But no more the roll of chanting drums,
The fifing flare, the flags, the magic spume
Filling his spirit with a wild perfume;
Now noisome anguish numbs
His sense, that mocks and leers at monstrous vacuums.
Whang! splits the spanker near him, and the boom
Crushes Macdonough, in a jumbled wreck,
Stunned on the deck.

No time to glance where wounded leaders lie,
Or think on fallen sparrows in the storm—
Only to fight! The prone commander’s form
Stirs, rises stumblingly,
And gropes where, under shrieking grape and musketry,
Men’s bodies wamble like a mangled swarm
Of bees. He bends to sight his gun again,
Bleeding, and then—

Oh, out of void and old oblivion
And reptile slime first rose Apollo’s head;
And God in likeness of Himself, ’tis said,
Created such an one,
Now shaping Shakespeare’s forehead, now Napoleon,
Various, by infinite invention bred,
In His own image molding beautiful
The human skull.

Jock lifts his head; Macdonough sights his gun
To fire—but in his face a ball of flesh,
A whizzing clod, has hurled him in a mesh
Of tangled rope and tun,
While still about the deck the lubber clod is spun
And, bouncing from the rail, lies in a plesh
Of oozing blood, upstaring eyeless, red—
A gunner’s head.
* * * * * * * *
Above the ships, enormous from the lake,
Rises a wraith—a phantom dim and gory,
Lifting her wondrous limbs of smoke and glory;
And little children quake
And lordly nations bow their foreheads for her sake,
And bards proclaim her in their fiery story;
And in her phantom breast, heartless unheeding,
Hearts—hearts are bleeding.

IV

Macdonough lies with Downie in one land.
Victor and vanquished long ago were peers.
Held in the grip of peace an hundred years,
England has laid her hand
In ours, and we have held—and still shall hold—the band
That makes us brothers of the hemispheres;
Yea, still shall keep the lasting brotherhood
Of law and blood.

Yet one whose terror racked us long of yore
Still wreaks upon the world her lawless might:
Out of the deeps again the phantom Fight
Looms on her wings of war,
Sowing in armèd camps and fields her venomed spore,
Embattling monarch’s whim against man’s right,
Trampling with iron hoofs the blooms of time
Back in the slime.

We, who from dreams of justice, dearly wrought,
First rose in the eyes of patient Washington,
And through the molten heart of Lincoln won
To liberty forgot,
Now, standing lone in peace, ’mid titans strange distraught,
Pray much for patience, more—God’s will be done!—
For vision and for power nobly to see
The world made free.

The Outlook Percy MacKaye

THE PROPHET

Jeremiah, will you come?
Will you gather up the multitudes, and wake them with a drum?
Will you dare anoint the chosen ones from all the cattle kind,
And threaten with the fire of God the foolish and the blind?

Jeremiah, Jeremiah, we have waited for you long,
To see the flaming fury of your hate against the wrong,
For we dally in the Temple, and we flee the eye of Truth,
And we waste along the wilderness the glory of our youth.

Jeremiah, Jeremiah, here the lying prophets speak,
Here they flatter in their feebleness the gilded and the sleek;
But their languid pipings die in shame when trumpet cries are heard.
Are you coming? Are you coming? O Prophet of the Word!

The Forum Lyman Bryson

NEWPORT

On these brown rocks the waves dissolve in spray
As when our fathers saw them first alee.
If such a one could come again and see
This ancient haven in its latter day,
These haughty palaces and gardens gay,
These dense, soft lawns, bedecked by many a tree
Borne like a gem from Ind or Araby;
If he could see the race he bred, at play—
Bright like a flock of tropic birds allured
To pause a moment on the southward wing
By these warm sands and by these summer seas—
Would he not cry, “Alas, have I endured
Exile and famine, hate and suffering,
To win religious liberty for these?”

Smart Set Alice Duer Miller

TO A PHOTOGRAPHER

I have known joy and woe and toil and fight
I have lived largely, I have dreamed and planned,
And Time, the sculptor, with a master hand,
Upon my face has wrought for all men’s sight
The lines and seams of Life, of growth and blight,
Of struggle and of service and command;
And now you show me This—this waxen, bland
And placid face—unlined, untroubled, white!
This is not I—this fatuous face you show
Retouched and prettified and smoothed to please,
Put back the wrinkles and the lines I know;
I have spent blood and brain achieving these,
Out of the pain, the sorrow and the wrack,
They are my scars of battle—PUT THEM BACK!

Harper’s Weekly Berton Braley

SONG

Flesh unto flowers,
And flame unto wind,
The cleansing of showers
Shall come to thee blind.

In the night of thy sleeping
The sound of the tide
Shall waken thee weeping
To turn to my side.

Boston Transcript Edward J. O’Brien

SONNET XXXVII

Through vales of Thrace, Peneus’ stream is flowing
Past legend-peopled hillsides to the deep;
From Paestum’s rose-hung plains soft winds are blowing;
The halls of Amber lie in haunted sleep;
The Cornish sea is silent with the Summer
That once bore Iseult from the Irish shore;
And lovely lone Fiesole is dumber
Than when Lorenzo’s garland-guests it wore.
This eve for us the emerald clearness glowing
Over the stream, where late was ruddy might,
Whispers a wonder, dumb to other knowing,—
Known but to you, the silence, and the night.
Our boat drifts breathless; the last light is dying;
Stars, dawn, shall find us here together lying.

The Forum Arthur Davison Ficke

THE HUNTING OF DIAN

In the silence of a midnight lost, lost forevermore,
I stood upon a nameless beach where none had been before,
And red gold and yellow gold were the shells upon that shore.

Lone, lone it was as a mist-enfolded strand
Set round a lake where marble demons stand—
Held like a sapphire-stone in Thibet’s monstrous hand.

And there I beheld how One stood in her grace
To hold to the stars her wet and faery face,
And on the smooth and haunted sands her footfall had no trace.

White, white was she as the youngest seraph’s word,
Or milk of Eden’s kine or Eden’s fragrant curd,
Cast in love by Eve’s wan hand to her most snowy bird.

Fair, fair was she as Venus of the sky,
And the jasmine of her breast and starlight of her eye
Made the heart a pain and the soul a hopeless sigh.

Weak with the sight I leaned upon my sword,
Till my soul that had sighed was become an unseen chord
For stress of music rendered to unknown things adored.

Surely she heard, but her beauty gave no sign
To me for whom the hushed sea was odorous as wine,—
To me for whom the voiceless world was made her silent shrine.

And she sent forth her gaze to the waters of the West,
And she sent forth her soul to the Islands of the Blest,
Below a star whose silver throes set pearls upon her breast.

But chill in the East brake a glory on the lands,
And she moaned like some low wave that dies on frozen sands,
And held to her sea-lover sweet and cruel hands.

Then rose the moon, and its lance was in her side,
And there was bitter music because in woe she cried,
Ere on the hard and gleaming beach she laid her down and died.

I leapt to her succor, my sword I left behind;
But one low mound of opal foam was all that I could find—
A moon-washed length of airy gems that trembled in the wind.

I knelt below the stars; the sea put forth a wave;
The moon drew up the captive tides upon her shining grave,
As far away I heard the cry her dim sea-lover gave.

Smart Set George Sterling

THE FIREMEN’S BALL

SECTION ONE

To be read, or chanted, with the heavy buzzing bass of fire-engines pumping. In this passage the reading or chanting is shriller and higher.

“Give the engines room,
Give the engines room.”
Louder, faster
The little band-master
Whips up the fluting,
Hurries up the tooting.
He thinks that he stands,
The reins in his hands,
In the fire-chief’s place
In the night alarm chase.
The cymbals whang,
The kettledrums bang:—
“Clear the street,
Clear the street
Clear the street—Boom, boom.
In the evening gloom,
In the evening gloom,
Give the engines room,
Give the engines room,
Lest souls be trapped
In a terrible tomb.”
The sparks and the pine-brands
Whirl on high
From the black and reeking alleys
To the wide red sky.
Hear the hot glass crashing,
Hear the stone steps hissing.
Coal black streams
Down the gutters pour.
There are cries for help
From a far fifth floor.
For a longer ladder
Hear the fire-chief call.
Listen to the music
Of the firemen’s ball.

To be read or chanted in a heavy bass.

“’Tis the
Night
Of doom,”
Say the ding-dong doom-bells.
“Night
Of doom,”
Say the ding-dong doom-bells.
Faster, faster
The red flames come.
“Hum grum,” say the engines,
“Hum grum grum.”

Shriller and higher.

“Buzz, buzz,”
Says the crowd.
“See, see,”
Calls the crowd.
“Look out,”
Yelps the crowd
And the high walls fall:—
Listen to the music
Of the firemen’s ball.
Listen to the music
Of the firemen’s ball.

Heavy bass.

“’Tis the
Night
Of doom,”
Say the ding-dong doom-bells.
Night
Of doom,
Say the ding-dong doom-bells.
Whangaranga, whangaranga,
Whang, whang, whang,
Clang, clang, clangaranga,

Bass, much slower.

Clang, clang, clang.
Clang—a—ranga—
Clang—a—ranga—
Clang,
Clang.
Listen—to—the—music—
Of the firemen’s ball—

SECTION TWO

To be read or sung slowly and softly, in the manner of lustful, insinuating music.

“Many’s the heart that’s breaking
If we could read them all
After the ball is over.” (An old song.)
Scornfully, gaily
The bandmaster sways,
Changing the strain
That the wild band plays.
With a red and royal intoxication,
A tangle of sounds
And a syncopation,
Sweeping and bending
From side to side,
Master of dreams,
With a peacock pride.
A lord of the delicate flowers of delight
He drives compunction
Back through the night.
Dreams he’s a soldier
Plumed and spurred,
And valiant lads
Arise at his word,
Flaying the sober
Thoughts he hates,
Driving them back
From the dream-town gates.
How can the languorous
Dancers know
The red dreams come
When the good dreams go?

To be read or chanted slowly and softly in the manner of lustful insinuating music.

“’Tis the
Night
Of love,”
Call the silver joy-bells,
“Night
Of love,”
Call the silver joy-bells.
“Honey and wine,
Honey and wine.
Sing low, now, violins,
Sing, sing low,
Blow gently, wood-wind,
Mellow and slow.
Like midnight poppies
The sweethearts bloom.
Their eyes flash power,
Their lips are dumb.
Faster and faster
Their pulses come,
Though softer now
The drum-beats fall.
Honey and wine,
Honey and wine.
’Tis the firemen’s ball,
’Tis the firemen’s ball.

With a climax of whispered mourning.

“I am slain,”
Cries true-love
There in the shadow.
“And I die,”
Cries true-love,
There laid low.
“When the fire-dreams come,
The wise dreams go.”

Suddenly interrupting. To be read or sung in a heavy bass. First eight lines as harsh as possible. Then gradually musical and sonorous.

But his cry is drowned
By the proud band-master
And now great gongs whang,
Sharper, faster,
And kettledrums rattle
And hide the shame
With a swish and a swirk
In dead love’s name.
Red and crimson
And scarlet and rose
Magical poppies
The sweethearts bloom.
The scarlet stays
When the rose-flush goes,
And love lies low
In a marble tomb.
“’Tis the
Night
Of doom,”
Call the ding-dong doom-bells.
“Night
Of doom,”
Call the ding-dong doom-bells.

Sharply interrupting in a very high key. Heavy bass.

Hark how the piccolos still make cheer.
“’Tis a moonlight night in the spring of the year.”
Clangaranga, clangaranga,
Clang ... clang ... clang.
Clang ... a ... ranga ...
Clang ... a ... ranga ...
Clang ... clang ... clang ...
Listen ... to ... the ... music ...
Of ... the ... firemen’s ball ...
Listen ... to ... the ... music ...
Of ... the ... Firemen’s ... Ball ...

SECTION THREE

In Which, contrary to Artistic Custom, the moral of the piece is placed before the reader.

(From the first Khandaka of the Mahavagga: “There Buddha thus addressed his disciples: ‘Everything, O mendicants, is burning. With what fire is it burning? I declare unto you it is burning with the fire of passion, with the fire of anger, with the fire of ignorance. It is burning with the anxieties of birth, decay and death, grief, lamentation, suffering and despair.... A disciple, ... becoming weary of all that, divests himself of passion. By absence of passion, he is made free.’”)

To be intoned after the manner of a priestly service.

I once knew a teacher,
Who turned from desire,
Who said to the young men,
“Wine is a fire.”
Who said to the merchants:—
“Gold is a flame
That sears and tortures
If you play at the game.”
I once knew a teacher
Who turned from desire
Who said to the soldiers,
“Hate is a fire.”
Who said to the statesmen:—
“Power is a flame
That flays and blisters
If you play at the game.”
I once knew a teacher
Who turned from desire,
Who said to the lordly,
“Pride is a fire.”
Who thus warned the revellers:—
“Life is a flame.
Be cold as the dew
Would you win at the game
With hearts like the stars,

Interrupting very loudly for the last time.

With hearts like the stars.”
So BEWARE,
So BEWARE,
So BEWARE OF THE FIRE.
Clear the streets,
Boom, boom,
Clear the streets,
Boom, boom,
Give the engines room,
Give the engines room,
Lest souls be trapped
In a terrible tomb.
Says the swift white horse
To the swift black horse:—
“There goes the alarm,
There goes the alarm.
They are hitched, they are off,
They are gone in a flash,
And they strain at the driver’s iron arm.”
Clang ... a ... ranga ... clang ... a ... ranga....
Clang ... clang ... clang ...
Clang ... a ... ranga ... clang ... a ... ranga...
Clang ... clang ... clang....
Clang ... a ... ranga ... clang ... a ... ranga.
Clang ... clang ... clang.

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vachel Lindsay

SUMMONS

The eager night and the impetuous winds,
The hints and whispers of a thousand lures,
And all the swift persuasion of the Spring,
Surged from the stars and stones, and swept me on....
The smell of honeysuckles, keen and clear,
Startled and shook me, with the sudden thrill
Of some well-known but half-forgotten voice.
A slender stream became a naked sprite,
Flashed around curious bends, and winked at me
Beyond the turns, alert and mischievous.
A saffron moon, dangling among the trees,
Seemed like a toy balloon caught in the boughs,
Flung there in sport by some too-mirthful breeze....
And as it hung there, vivid and unreal,
The whole world’s lethargy was brushed away;
The night kept tugging at my torpid mood
And tore it into shreds. A warm air blew
My wintry slothfulness beyond the stars;
And over all indifference there streamed
A myriad urges in one rushing wave....
Touched with the lavish miracles of earth,
I felt the brave persistence of the grass;
The far desire of rivulets; the keen,
Unconquerable fervor of the thrush;
The endless labors of the patient worm;
The lichen’s strength; the prowess of the ant;
The constancy of flowers; the blind belief
Of ivy climbing slowly toward the sun;
The eternal struggles and eternal deaths—
And yet the groping faith of every root!
Out of old graves arose the cry of life;
Out of the dying came the deathless call.
And, thrilling with a new sweet restlessness,
The thing that was my boyhood woke in me—
Dear, foolish fragments made me strong again;
Valiant adventures, dreams of those to come,
And all the vague, heroic hopes of youth,
With fresh abandon, like a fearless laugh,
Leaped up to face the heaven’s unconcern....

And then—veil upon veil was torn aside—
Stars, like a host of merry girls and boys,
Danced gaily ’round me, plucking at my hand;
The night, scorning its ancient mystery,
Leaned down and pressed new courage in my heart;
The hermit-thrush, throbbing with more Song,
Sang with a happy challenge to the skies;
Love, and the faces of a world of children,
Swept like a conquering army through my blood—
And Beauty, rising out of all its forms,
Beauty, the passion of the universe,
Flamed with its joy, a thing too great for tears,
And, like a wine, poured itself out for me
To drink of, to be warmed with, and to go
Refreshed and strengthened to the ceaseless fight;
To meet with confidence the cynic years;
Battling in wars that never can be won,
Seeking the lost cause and the brave defeat.

Century Louis Untermeyer

PATTERNS

Would you lay a pattern on life and say, thus shall ye live?
I tell you that is a denial of life;
I say that thus we pour our spirits in a mold, and they cake and die.

I want to go to the man who quickens me;
I want the gift of life, the flame of his spirit eating along the tinder of my heart;
I want to feel the flood-gates within flung open and the tides pouring through me;
I want to take what I am and bring it to fruit.

Quicken me, and I will grow;
Touch me with flame, and the blossoms will open and the fruit appear.
Call forth in me a creator, and the god will answer.
And then, if I commit what you call a sin,
Better so.
It will not be a sin. It will be a mere breaking of your patterns;
For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be altogether alive and your own authentic self.

Century James Oppenheim

NEW YORK

Sea-rimmed and teeming with millions poured out on thy granite shore
Surge upon surge, many-nationed, O City far-famed for the roar
Of thy cavernous iron streets and thy towers half hung in the sun,
Rising in layer on layer, twelve cities piled upon one,
All feeding and sleeping and breeding, enormous, half palace, half den,
With ever a tide washing through thee whose clamoring waters are men,
O where is the hand of thy builder? What god, canst thou tell,
Hath his hand on the clay of thy face? Or what demon from Hell?
I have viewed with the eye of the stranger and the pride of the New World man
The mountainous leap of thy glory, the miles of thy endless span,
And my heart has gone up with thy towers and my love has fallen as dew
On thy night-blooming lamps in rows on thy beautiful Avenue.
I have stood with a seaman’s glass on the roofs of thy high hotels;
I have rolled through the sheer ravines where the cliff dweller dwells;
I have peered from the place of the Tomb far up where the hills break free
And the length of the lordly River comes down as a bride to the sea;
I have fled with a roar through the rock where the myriad lights flash by;
I have heard the song of the soaring steel come down from the sky;
I have watched as a lover thy waters all mottled with cloud and with sun
Where the ocean comes in to caress thee, O Beautiful One;
And the days and the years of my life are a gift unto thee,
And I dwell in thy marvelous gates, O Goddess cast up by the sea!

I have surged with the morning throng down the gulf of the Great White Way
That gashes thy granite length from the towers of sleep to the Bay
When the West rolls in with a rush and the North comes down with a roar
And the tramp of the Island men is loud on thy island shore.
Shoulder to shoulder they come from the loins of a hundred lands,
The men with the New World brains and the men with the Old World hands,
And the vision is bright on the sky of the City to be
And the joy of the morning is there and the thrill of the sea.
As a surf is the sound of thy labor, O City; as wine
Is the hum of thy human streets filled with faces divine
When from building on populous building thy power unfurled
Leaps down to the sea and off through the air to the ends of the world.
I have loafed round the banging wharves where the foreign freighters lie;
I have watched the bridge-weaving shuttles pass over the sky;
I have felt the quick leap of thy drills where the builders of Rome
Swing the rock from the hole in the ground for the walls of thy home;
I have heard far down through the canyons the clamor and yell
When the brokers are out with their signs and the Curb is a hell;
I have sounded thy chattering markets; I have watched the noon hour
Come over thy toiling miles with a slack of thy terrible power
When story on story lets out on the pavement below
And thy streets are a-swarm with the Jew and the parks overflow.
Far-famed is the rustling hour when the shoppers flow in,
For miles thy walks are abloom and the monstrous fairs begin,
And the aisles of the merchants are crowded, and dark-faced boys,
Are out on the corners with flowers, and fakirs are there with their toys.
I have paused with the passing throng where the hoyden sea wind whirls
And whisks round the tall gray towers the skirts of the laughing girls;
I have watched round the wonder of windows the beauty and grace;
I have breasted the streaming throngs and have come to the quiet place
Of the Fountain, and weary with tramping have lounged on the benches there
With the homeless man of the streets, the man with the unkempt hair;
Have given him soul for soul as we watched far up in the skies
The just-seen worker wave and the slab of marble rise
To its place on the fortieth story. Still lit by the sun
Is the face of the golden clock when the toil of the day is done.
Then the long gray miles are a-murmur and the builders come down from the sky,
And Speed throws her myriad shuttles and the ambulance hurries by,
And the foam of the evening papers is white on the living sea,
And the deep defiles are black with men as far as the eye can see,
And loaded trains rush north and west from thy mighty central heart,
And the rivers foam and the bridges sag till their strong steel cables start,
And the Rock drinks in its thousands from the moving flood in the street
As the strong male tide goes out with the roar of a million feet.
I know when the night comes down that a beautiful Siren awakes.
I have seen the flash of her eyes and the light that her shadow makes
On the rain-wet Avenue when the flutes of pleasure are heard
And she dances her way to the wine cup and sings like a bird.
Hand in hand go the sons of Youth and the daughters of Beauty divine,
And the children of Hunger are there who have trodden the grapes of their wine,
And the thousands pour and pour through the huge illumined Fair,
And the booths of a hundred lands are bright and the Wonder-worker is there.
The red star is out on the roof and the horses are off on the wall,
And the girl and the dog are blown along and the flashing water fall,
And the flush of thy far-flung revel goes up to the ribbons of sky,
And forgotten Orion sinks down and the Pleiades die.
I have trailed down the pleasant river; I have tramped where the iron “L’s”
Go thundering down through the haunts of care; I have slummed through the hidden hells;
I have jostled the mingling Bowery where the stream of the races rolls;
I know the town where the yellow man goes by on his velvet soles;
I have threaded the still, dark canyons where the clustered towers rise;
Not a foot is heard of the thousands; they are ghosts on the midnight skies;
I have seen o’er the glamour of waters thy piles upon shadowy piles
Standing out on the canvas of night and twinkling for miles upon miles.
As a grail is the gleam of thy towers and the glow of the Great White Way,
And a thousand ships have sailed and sailed to the lure of the lights on the Bay,
And the spell of thy song, O Enchantress, is sweet on the southern air,
And the shepherd far out on the plains feels the sting of thy hair.
Thou art young with the youth of them, strong with the strength of them, filled with the beauty of girls;
Thy throat where the River gleams is beaded with lamps as with pearls;
And the languor of night is around thee and the waters rise and fall,
And over invisible bridges slow fireworms crawl,
And the Ferries that glide o’er the bay, o’er the rivers that lave
The feet of thy emerald towers, are lighted swans on the wave,
As Merlin had walked o’er thy waters, or Prospero’s eye
Were watching alternate old cities line out on the sky,
One moment Jerusalem gleams and thy towers are holy and white,
And lo, at the turn of a glass, old Babylon etched on the night
With high summer gardens abloom and the wealth of the world in her hair;
Then Carnival laughs in thy streets and Cairo is there
Barbaric all over with brooches and fountains of fire
Till the new day quenches the lamps and flares over Tyre.

The Smart Set Edwin Davies Schoonmaker

WE DEAD

When from the brooding home,
The silent, immemorial love-house,
The belovèd body of the mother in her travail,
Naked, the little one comes and wails at the world’s bleak weather,
We say that on earth and to us a child has been born.
But now we move with unhalting pace toward the dark evening,
And toward the cold, lengthening shadow,
And quick we avert our fearful eyes from the strange event,
The burial and the bourne,
That leaving home, the end—death.

Are these, then, birth and death?
Does the cut of a cord bring life, and dust to dust expunge it?
If so, what are we, then, we dead?

For, in the cities,
And dark on the lonely farms, and waifs on the ocean,
As a harrying of wind, as an eddying of dust,
We dead, in our soft, shining bodies that are combed and are kissed,
Are ghosts fleeing from the inescapable hell of ourselves.

We are even as beetles skating over the waters of our own darkness;
Even as beetles, darting and restless,
But the depths dark and void—

We have found no peace, no peace, though our engines are crafty.
What avail wings to the flier in the skies
While his dead soul, like an anchor, drags on the earth?
And what avails lightning darting a man’s voice, linking the cities,
While in the booth he is the same varnished clod,
And his soul flies not after?
And what avails it that the body of man has waxed mammoth,
Limbed with the lightning and the stream,
While his spirit remains a torment and a trifle,
And, gaining the world, profits nothing?

Self-murdered, self-slain, the dead cumber the earth;
And how did they die?
A boy was born in the pouring radiance of creative magic;
And with pulses of music he was born.
Of himself he might have been shaping a song-wingèd poet;
But he was afraid.
He feared the gaunt garret of starvation and the lonely years in his soul’s desert,
And he feared to be a jest and a fool before his friends.
Now he clerks, the slave,
And the magic is slimed with disastrous opiates of the night.

A girl was bathed with the lissome beauty of the seeker of love,
The call of the animals one to another in the spring,
The desire of the captive woman in her heart, as she ran and leaped on the hills;
But the imprisoned beast’s cry terrified her as she looked out over the love-quiet of the modern world.
Yet she desired to take this man-lure and release it into loveliness,
Become a dancer, lulling with witchcraft of her young body the fevered world.
But, no, her mother spied here a wickedness,
Shamefully she submitted, making a smoldering inferno of the hidden nymph in her soul,
And so died.

A woman was made body and heart for the beautiful love-life;
But of the mother-miracle,
How the cry of a troubled child whitens the red passions,
She did not know.
Fear of poverty corrupted her: she chose a fool that her heart hated,
And now through him no release for her native passions,
But only a spending of her loathsome fury on adornment and luxury.
Ah, dead glory! and the heart sick with betrayal!
There is no grace for the dead save to be born again:
Engines shall not drag us from the grave,
Nor wine nor meat revive us.

For our thirst is a thirst no liquor can reach nor slake,
And our hunger a hunger by no bread filled.
The waters we crave bubble up from the springs of life,
And the bread we would break comes down from invisible hands.

We dead, awake!
Kiss the beloved past good-by,
Go leave the love-house of the betrayèd self,
And through the dark of birth go and enter the soul the soul’s bleak weather.
And I—I will not stay dead, though the dead cling to me;
I will put away the kisses and the soft embraces and the walls that encompass me,
And out of this womb I will surely move to the world of my spirit.
I will lose my life to find it, as of old;
Yea, I will turn from the life-lie I lived to the truth I was wrought for,
And I will take the creator within, sower of the seed of the race,
And make him a god, a shaper of civilization.

Now on my soul’s imperious surge,
Taking the risk, as of death, and in deepening twilight,
I ride on the darkening flood and go out on the waters
Till over the tide comes music, till over the tide the breath
Of the song of my far-off soul is wafted and blown,
Murmuring commandments.

Storm and darkness! I am drowned in the torrent!
I am moving forth irrevocably from the sheltering womb!
I am naked and little!
Oh, cold of the world, and light blinding, and space terrifying
Now my cry goes up and the wailing of my helpless soul:
Mother! my mother!

Lo, then, the mother eternal!
In my opening soul the footfall of her fleeting tread,
And the song of her voice piercing and sweet with love of me,
And the enwinding of her arms and adoring of her breath,
And the milk of her plenty!
Oh, Life, of which I am part—Life, from the depths of the heavens,
That ascended like a water-spring into David of Asia on the eastern hills in the night,
That came like a noose of golden shadow on Joan in the orchard,
That gathers all life—the binding of brothers into sheaves,
That of old, kneelers in the dust
Named, glorying, Allah, Jehovah, God.

Century James Oppenheim

GOD AND THE FARMER

God sat down with the farmer
When the noontide heat grew harsh.
The One had builded a world that day,
And the other had drained a marsh.
They sat in the cooling shadow
At the porch of the templed wood;
And each looked forth on his handiwork,
And saw that the work was good.

On God’s right hand two cherubs
Bent waiting, winged with fire;
On the farmer’s left his oxen bowed
Deep bosoms marked with mire.
Still clung around the plowshare
The dark, mysterious mold,
Where the furrow it turned had heaved the new
O’er the chill and churlish old.

Jehovah’s face was seen not
By ox or grazing kine;
But the farmer’s eyes, were they dazed with sun,
Or saw he that look divine?
Was it the wind in passing
That stroked that farmer’s hair?
Or had God’s own hand of wind and flame
Laid benediction there?

Through muffling miles he fancied
Far calls of greeting blew,
Where on sounding plains the lords of war
Hurled down to rear anew.
Glad hail from nation-builders
Crossed faint those dreamland bounds,
Like a brother’s cry from a distant hill.
And God spake as the pine-tree sounds.

“There are seven downy meadows
That never before were mown;
There were seven fields of brush and rock
Where now is nor bush nor stone.
There are seven heifers grazing
Where but one could graze before.
O lords of marts—and of broken hearts—
What have you given me more?”

God rose up from the farmer
When the cool of the evening neared;
And the One went forth through the worlds He built,
And the one through the fields he cleared.
The stars outlasting labor
Leaned down o’er the flowering soil;
And all night long o’er His child there leaned
A Toiler more old than toil.

Yale Review Frederick Erastus Pierce

SONG

O shadows past the candle-gleam, so brief to pause in flight,
Are shadows that can come no more
Still moving unseen on the door
Of Yesternight?

O roses on the crumbling wall, so soon to droop and die,
Are any roses that are dead
Still fragrant where their petals bled
In Junes gone by?

O heart of mine, there is a face nor grief nor prayer can bring....
Think you in some far Shadow-land
One keeps my roses in his hand,
Remembering?

Boston Transcript Ruth Guthrie Harding

SURETY

We have each other’s deathless love,
A love that flies on wings of light
From star to star and sings above
The night:
We bid each other’s eyes reveal
The face whose images we are;
We find each other’s hand upon the wheel
Piloting every star.

Shall we then watch with a less lonely breath
Gradual, sudden, everlasting death?

Oh, lest a separating wind assail
The jocund stars and all their ways be dearth,
And love, undone of its immense avail,
Go homeless even on earth,
Let us be constant, though we travel far,
With every mortal token of our trust,
And not forget, piloting any star,
How dear a thing is dust!

Yale Review Witter Bynner

REMEMBRANCE: GREEK FOLK-SONG

Not unto the forest—not unto the forest, O my lover!
Why do you lead me to the forest?
Joy is where the temples are, lines of dancers swinging far,
Drums and lyres and viols in the town
(It is dark in the forest)
And the flapping leaves will blind me and the clinging vines will bind me
And the thorny rose-boughs tear my saffron gown—
And I fear the forest.

Not unto the forest—not unto the forest, O my lover!
There was one once who led me to the forest:
Hand in hand we wandered mute, where was neither lyre nor flute,
Little stars were bright against the dusk
(There was wind in the forest)
And the thicket of wild rose breathed across our lips locked close
Dizzy perfumings of spikenard and musk....
I am tired of the forest.

Not unto the forest—not unto the forest, O my lover!
Take me from the silence of the forest!
I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears,
But here in the forest
I am still, remembering a forgotten, useless thing,
And my eyelids are locked down for fear of tears—
There is memory in the forest.

The Craftsman Margaret Widdemer

THE TWO FLAMES

Behind my mask of life there lies a shrine
Wherein two flames are burning. Day and night
I tend these leaping treasures that are mine,
These lambent loves, the red one and the white,
While, priestess-like, I hang at either glow,
For each is perfect. And to each I bring
The oil of pure emotion, hottest so,
And draw new strength from my own offering.

The first of these my loves burns as a star
That lifts its keen, white glory into space
With virgin fervor, lavishing afar
Its vivid purity: and in the face
Of changeful worlds it glows unaltered still.
So burns my flame of friendship. In its sight
All things are silvered with a new delight
And beauty’s self strikes deeper, till the thrill
Of mere existence vibrates like a string.
Then life is grown so taut that it must sing,
And all the little hills must clap their hands.
The soul is free as never bird on wing
To bathe in friendship like a sea of light:
And ever as it mounts the sea expands
In new infinities, and each new height
Grows keener than the last, until the mind
For very dizziness sweeps downward then
To simpler things, the cadence of a voice,
Or sweet, low laughter, idle as the wind,
Or fleeting touch of hands that quick rejoice
But ask no more and do not touch again.
With this white flame there comes a strange new peace,
A deep tranquillity unknown beside,
Where all my life’s cross-currents shift and cease
Like runways in the sand before the tide.
And all that I have longed to be, the brave
High dreams of youth that languished nigh forgot
Seem half accomplished. Easy now to slave
At tasks colossal, so my friend fail not.
And I am filled with gentle wonderment
That life can be so good and breath so sweet:
While all my world grows suddenly complete.
That I must love it with a new content.
So speech grows overfull, and we are fain
To drink of silence like a golden cup
With wine of sweet companionship filled up
That has no end, nor any thirst can drain.
And so at last no wish is left to me
Save thus to dream into eternity.
This is my first white love.

The second flame
Burns red and fierce as noon-time on the earth,
A wild, full-blooded love that sprang to birth
Naked and unafraid, yet scorning shame
And clean as winds that sweep the desert’s breast.
My flame of passion this, born of the sun
And warm red earth, so æon-long ago,
In languid, throbbing noons, when dust was pressed
To amorous dust, and longing made it one.
This is a good love too, and must be so,
Though bloodless fathers crushed it and denied,
And on a cross of virtue crucified
This firm sweet flesh that colors with our soul.
Aye! it is good, and beautiful, and clean,
To feel within my veins the surge and flow
Of young desire waking, that the whole
Warm universe has felt: to call, and preen,
And dance before my mate that he may know
An answering surge, and leap, and make me his
And glad with every fecund thing that is.
God! It is good to feel the primal cry,
The deep, mad longing for another life,—
My life and his, that shall be born of me,—
A little child of flame, that when we die
We may cheat time, nor perish in the strife:
But in this hour of vital ecstasy
When life is molten, we may stamp thereon
Our own glad image, and conceive, and live.
And sweet it is, and languid, when the tide
Has ebbed, for lack of more than I can give,
To take his hand who breathes so close beside
And lay it on my breast, and humble me
To say: “Thou art my lord. Thy will my own.”
So at the last this wish is mine, to be
Struck at the high-tide into nothingness,
To die, ere he can learn to love me less.

So these my loves are perfect, each alone
Sufficient in itself and all complete,
Yet one of two, like rival beacons shown,
That call and call me, but that never meet.
For yet they have not met, nor ever burned
The white flame in the red, the red in white
Till both were wed together there, and turned
To some half-dreamed intensity of light.

For I have dreamed,—yes, in my priestess soul
The longing grows for one great altar fire
That shall leap up to heaven, a winged desire,
Not two but one, a perfect, living whole.
Is this a dream? Are all great lovers dreams?
Can red and white be fused, or two be one?
Yseult and Eloise, are they but themes
Whereon men hang the yearnings they have spun?
And must I cherish so till the end’s end
My sweet loves sundered, lover here, or friend?
Nay, I know not! I guard by day and night
My leaping flames, the red one and the white.

The Forum Eloise Briton

THE LOOK

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.